Turn off your Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, everyone! Well...not quite yet. Researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences have successfully used LED lights to transfer wireless data to a laptop at a speed of 2Mbps.

What does this mean? Well, it's obviously another option for sending and receiving data, but could prove ultra-interesting when your internet connection doubles up as your home lighting too. It would be a short-range network for connecting your home system, and while I doubt it'll replace your current set-up it could certainly help take some strain off it. As you know, LEDs are dirt cheap these days, and as Engadget points out, Palm Pilots used to beam contacts using IrDA (Infrared Data Association), so while this Chinese breakthrough sounds pretty alarming—it's actually just taking the foundation stones of yesteryear and building upon them. [Beijing Times via Engadget Chinese via Engadget]